


Paradoxes

by faithinthepoor



Series: Desperate Housewives [29]
Category: Desperate Housewives
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Could I Leave You?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradoxes

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [Unseemly](http://archiveofourown.org/works/668467), [The Theory of Everything](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor), [Here There Be Dragons](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673221), [Somnambulist](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673229), [Wishin’ and Hopin’](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673233), [Nosology](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673238), [Boundary Violations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673240), [Fractals](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673250), [Windmill Tilting](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673255), [Ambitendency](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673262), [Heisenberg Territory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673272), [The Illusions of Prisms](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673700), [Keratitis Sicca](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682311), [Schrödinger’s Realm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682327), [Chiaroscuro](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682358), [Altered Trajectories](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682370), [Elegiacs](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1952136), [Tachyphylaxis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1952244), [Verismo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953516), [Forced Perspective](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953594), [Lex Talionis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953624), [Repetition Compulsion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953663), [Cardioid Geometry](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953693), [Mereology](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1959777), [Battlelines](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1960131), [Enteropathy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1960167), [Abnegation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1960179) and [Lichtenberg Figures](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1960806)

Epiphanies have always made her uncomfortable, she knows they don’t necessarily have nefarious consequences but, whatever the outcome, they disturb the structure and orderliness of her life and she takes them as a personal affront. She currently finds herself in an incredibly undignified situation and there are pieces of mental intimately acquainted with parts of her anatomy that she would prefer not to have contact with foreign bodies but these things seem small when compared with the emotional revelations that she has experienced. Andrew is more evil than she could ever have imagined and she doesn’t know what to do about his threats to claim that she is a child molester, even if he doesn’t manage to convince the court of the guilt, that sort of mud clings and she will always be under suspicion, if not from the authorities from her peers, her friends, her neighbours. He knows that she would rather die than sully her reputation in that way but if she continues to let him use that leverage to blackmail her she is failing in her job to protect him, she is feeding the monster inside her child. She used to think that she would sacrifice anything for her children and it saddens her to realise that she may have reached a point where she would choose to save herself rather than him. Passing out in the dressing room certainly lends credence to everyone’s believe that she is an alcoholic and while it would be possible to dismiss this event as an unfortunate but understandable reaction to Andrew’s duplicity, getting oneself trapped in a department store gives you time to think and while she doesn’t believe that the problem is a big as others make out, she can admit that she has been drinking for all the wrong reasons. 

The most startling realisation is how alone she truly is, she has no-one to call to get her out of this predicament. Calling the longhaired, unwashed, flannel shirt wearer from the AA meeting is pretty much the definition of a last ditch attempt but at least he is not connected to anyone else in her life and is so it’s less likely that news of her misfortune will spread. The more she thinks about it the more she realises that he is actually the most logical and practical choice but she can’t say that he was her first choice nor was he the first person that she called. Lynette hung-up before she even had a chance to explain the situation and then apparently left the phone off the hook because from that moment on all she managed to receive was an engaged signal. She knows she deserves Lynette’s scorn but it still smarts. Lynette is the only one of her friends that she would trust to come through for her in a situation like this, sure she would have mocked her mercilessly and never let her forget about it but she would have managed to quickly and efficiently rescue her from the jaws of death, in losing her she has lost so much more than just a woman that she was having an affair with, she’s lost a friend, an ally, a precious resource.

Her unlikely hero shows up and she is extremely grateful for his assistance in extricating her, although she is less than thrilled that his security guard side-kick attempted to remove the last vestiges of her dignity when he immortalised the event by capturing it with his camera phone. The pounding in her head is overshadowed by fresh fires of pain as blood returns to the areas of her body that were compressed by the bars between which she was sandwiched. The composure that she had desperately tried to retain crumbles and she finds herself spilling her secrets and shame. She tells him things that she hasn’t told anyone else, things that she didn’t want to believe, things that she would have told her therapist if she didn’t have to worry about what Dr Goldfine thought of her. Nothing is how it’s supposed to be, she’s meant to have a husband and two beautiful children that she can be proud of, she’s meant to be a respectable pillar of the community, she’s meant to be something so very different to the woman that she has become. There is nothing that she likes about herself anymore, she was surviving due to the fact that she felt special when she looked at herself through Lynette’s eyes but even that is gone now. 

For an unhygienic hippie the little AA man is quite the gentlemen and even goes as far as to walk her to her door. The conversation with him was reasonably cathartic and she almost feels like a human being. He leaves and she sets about preparing herself for the major challenge of attempting to sleep without the aid of alcohol but is interrupted when a pounding on the front door triggers an extraordinarily large jack-hammer in her head. Other than Danielle screaming out for her to do something about the fact that there is someone at the door, her children make no effort to help and so she is forced to deal with the disturbance herself.

“Who the hell was that guy?”

She is in no mood to even attempt to be cordial, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“I felt bad about hanging up on you and then when you took so long to get home I thought you might have been in trouble, I started imagining that you were in a ditch somewhere and all this time you were hanging out with some guy, are you trying to hurt me?”

“Lynette keep your voice down, you woke Danielle up and if you must know that guy was my AA sponsor.”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s not been the best of evenings and I’m in a lot of pain and if you only came here to yell at me, you can consider your job done and go home.”

“Why are you in pain?”

“I have a hangover,” she holds her hand up to stop Lynette interrupting, “don’t lecture me, I’m trying to be honest with you, and I also managed to get myself trapped in a large gate and I hurt everywhere.”

“Are you okay?”

“Not in anyway but at least these are bruises that can heal.”

“How did you get yourself caught in a gate?”

“I’m in too much pain to go into that now.”

Lynette seems to convert to mother mode, “Go and sit on the couch, I will go and get some ice packs.” The blonde sets off on her task but stops before she enters the kitchen, “Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean anything, I owe you for looking after me during my raw bacon vomit bout.” She wants to protest but it feels really good to be taken care of and Lynette does owe her. Lynette returns with two ice packs, “This is all I could find so I hope it will be enough, I was going to improvise with some frozen vegetables but you don’t seem to have any.”

“I only buy fresh ones.”

“Of course you do.” Lynette looks her over, “So where should I apply these.”

“Just give them to me and I’ll do it,” she knows that she must be blushing, “I injured some places that are private.”

Lynette hands over the items, “I could help you know, it’s not like I would be seeing anything new.”

“It’s different now,” she winces as she tries to apply an ice pack to her back.

“I could hold it on your back Bree.”

It’s still more intimate a gesture than she feels comfortable with at the moment but she has to admit that it’s practical, “Okay.” She turns on the couch so that Lynette can have access to her back and hisses as the cold bites into her tender flesh. The numbness that follows is definitely blissful but just when she is starting to feel content a hand snakes around and tries to undo the buttons on her blouse, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t want your shirt to get ruined.”

“I’m sure it will be fine.”

“I should at least have a look and see how bad your back is.”

“I don’t think it’s as badly injured as other areas and there is no way you are getting a look at those.”

“Just let me look at your back Bree.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off, it you want to look you can just lift the shirt up.” The now damp material clings to her skin and she lets out a small yelp as Lynette lifts the shirt up, “how bad is it?”

Fingers trace over her skin, “The skin’s broken, it’s not deep but you are definitely going to have a nasty bruise.” Kisses are feathered around the area. 

“Lynette,” she cautions.

“What?” she replies with faux innocence. Her voice is husky as she adds, “I’m just kissing it to make it better, are you sure you don’t want me to look at your other injuries?”

“Lynette,” she seems to be reduced to a one word vocabulary.

“So I suck at hating you, sue me. Don’t tell me that you’re not as miserable as I am.”

“Of course I’m miserable but falling back into bed together won’t solve that.”

“I know, I was miserable when I was with you too.”

“You were?” she tries to crane her neck around so that she can see Lynette’s face.

“Yeah, it was just a different type of misery,” Lynette slides off the couch to sit on the floor and in response she cautiously moves to lie on her side.

“Do you think about what things would have been like if we’d met under different circumstances? If there were no husbands or kids?”

“That wouldn’t have happened.”

“I know it didn’t happen but I think about what it might have been like.”

“But that’s the ironic thing, if I wasn’t married I wouldn’t have moved to suburbia and I never would have met you. The way I see it, we were only ever going to meet under circumstances in which we couldn’t be together.”

“That just seems unfair.”

“Maybe but it’s more than just the location, I was different before I came here, before the husband and kids, I would never have even bothered to speak to someone like you.”

“You wouldn’t have found me attractive?”

“I’ve always thought you were gorgeous but I would have just thought you were a gorgeous, elitist, repressed woman that I had nothing in common with, without the husband and the kids I would have had no reason to talk to you.”

“I wasn’t always like that, you might have liked me.”

“I like you now, that’s kind of the problem.”

“I was different, I don’t know what happened to me, Rex used to ask what happened to the girl who would drink milk from the carton and I have honestly no idea where she went.”

Lynette tilts her head back onto the couch, “I thought you were going to try and tell me that you were rebellious or angry or something in you youth, I can’t believe that your big confession is that you drank milk from the carton.”

“It was an allegory.”

“I know and it was most endearing, it’s hard to imagine you doing that but I don’t think I know you all that well because I never saw you as an alcoholic.”

“Never did I, I’ve been going to the meetings and doing needlepoint, even after everything that happened,” she pauses to stroke Lynette’s hair, “even after losing you I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”

“So you still don’t think there’s a problem?” the edge in Lynette’s voice suggests that they are on dangerous ground.

“It’s a problem, one of many that I have, and I’m going to try and do something about it, I’m going to start taking the meetings seriously.”

Lynette reaches a hand up over her shoulder and Bree laces their fingers together, “Am I one of your problems?”

“Yes.”

“Am I the reason that you’ve been drinking?”

“No.”

“Are you just saying that to make me happy?”

“No, the drinking is about avoiding painful things in my life, you may make me miserable but you are not one of the things that I want to avoid.”

“Is it about Rex?”

“In part.”

“Do you think you’d have slept with me if he’d have lived?”

That’s a question that she really doesn’t like to contemplate, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t think you would have.”

“I wasn’t using you as a substitute for my grief.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

“I had the alcohol for that, you are much too special to be a substitute for something, but I should have waited.”

“Bree you were never going to be comfortable with this.”

“I won’t ever be shouting my love for you from mountain tops or dancing on any gay pride floats but that’s not what I’m talking about, I shouldn’t have gone straight from Rex to you.”

Lynette’s reply is soft, “You would have preferred to choose George?”

“No, he had a purpose but I never loved him.”

“Then I don’t get it, you wanted to play the field?”

“No. I just should have been willing to be alone for a while.”

“You tried.”

“Not hard enough.”

“It’s not your fault that I am irresistible, not to mention very persuasive.”

“I seem to recall that I broke up with you.”

“So we are still,” Lynette seems to be searching for the appropriate word, “apart?”

“I think so.”

“I’m not surviving very well without you.”

“See that’s another reason we should have waited, look at what we’ve done to your marriage.”

“I think I managed to do that all by myself.”

“You don’t think cheating on Tom has had an impact?”

“Of course it has but right now my marriage seems to work better when I’m with you than when I’m missing you and can’t think about anything else.”

“So you want us back together because it’s better for you and your husband?”

“That didn’t come out quite like I planned.”

“I should hope not but I don’t think I can do this right now.”

“Being with me makes things worse?”

“Sometimes. You make things messy, you make me want things that I can’t have, things that you can’t give.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Yes you do, you know the consequences for both of us, you just don’t care.”

“It’s not that I don’t care it’s just that it doesn’t seem as important as being with you.”

Sometimes Lynette doesn’t play fair, “Stop trying to make things difficult for me.”

“I’m only trying to tell you how I feel.”

“I know how you feel because I feel the same but Lynette I need some space, I need to sort myself out.”

“Yes you do, I’m still mad at you and I still don’t know that I can trust you and the drinking does frightens me but I’m more frightened by the idea that maybe if you sort yourself out, you won’t want me anymore,” the level of vulnerability that Lynette displays is almost enough to make her change her decision.

She reaches down to stroke Lynette’s arm, “That will never happen.”

“You keep trying to break up with me, is it really so ridiculous to think that one of these times it might stick or that you could meet someone else?”

“I guess there is the risk of that, there’s also a chance that you won’t want to take me back.”

“So where does this leave us? Are we at least back to being friends?”

“If you want that.”

“Of course I want that.”

“So it’s settled?”

“For now. How’s your pain?”

“I’m going to be so very sore in the morning.”

“My poor baby,” Lynette grabs the hand on her shoulder and places delicate kisses on the palm.

“Just friends Lynette, just friends.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re not going to make this easy are you?”

“There’s a definite chance that I may try to remind you of what you are missing out on.”

“Go home Lynette, I need to get some sleep.”

“You sure that you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll survive.”

“I can let myself out,” Lynette leaves after once again defying the ‘just friends’ decision by brushing a kiss to her lips and Bree has to wonder how she is over going to cope with giving up both Lynette and alcohol, she really does need to find a substitute and she fears that will not be an easy task.


End file.
